20 April 2014

On 17 April 2014, the European Parliament adopted the resolution "On Russian pressure on Eastern Partnership countries and in particular destabilisation of eastern Ukraine". 437 MEPs voted for, 49 - against, and 85 abstained. The analysis of the vote against the resolution (see below) reveals the formation of the far right/far left alliance in the European Parliament, and this "National Bolshevik" alliance is likely to grow stronger after the European elections in May 2014. The progressive forces of Europe should be worried about the rise of the far left as much as they are worried about the rise of the far right.

19 April 2014

Yesterday, I commented on the recent scandal involving the distribution of anti-Semitic flyers in Donetsk. As it often happens with comments to the media, not everything that I said to The Verge's journalist appeared in the final piece - which is fair enough by me - but I would like to briefly discuss one point which I found important but which was missed out in the above-mentioned article.

Amar Toor asked me whether I was surprised at the news about the anti-Semitic flyers in Donetsk. I replied that - although the authenticity of the flyers cannot be either proven or dismissed - I was not surprised, because anti-Semitic and racist incidents involving the (pro-)Russian insurgents and terrorists in South-Eastern Ukraine had happened before.

13 April 2014

71 years ago, on 13 April 1943, Radio Berlin reported that the German military forces had discovered a mass grave in the Katyn forest near Soviet Smolensk. Quoting from David Engel's Facing a Holocaust, the Germans -

uncovered “a ditch... 28 metres long and 16 metres wide, in which the bodies of 3,000 Polish officers were piled up in twelve layers.” The German broadcast charged that these officers had been shot by the Soviets in March 1940 and announced that the German forces expected to find additional pits containing up to 10,000 bodies. Two days later the Soviet government had responded, claiming that the dead were “former Polish prisoners of war, who... fell into the hands of the German-Fascist hangmen in the summer of 1941”.

12 April 2014

The tolerance of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) towards the extreme right revanchist rhetoric during its sessions is disgusting and totally unacceptable. On 9 April 2014, Jobbik's MP Tamás Gaudi Nagy made a 3-minute speech against European democracy, and even when the hateful nature of his speech became obvious, he was still allowed to continue.